Saturday, January 31, 2015

Thursday 29-01-2015

Friday, January 30, 2015

Using a Roku in Argentina

In short (for streaming) a real piece of shit.
Luckily that wasn't the idea when I got the Roku 3... If not, I think I would be extremely pissed...
For instance, Crackle doesn't even load, it belches a warning that it is unsupported on my location.
But the worst, the worst by far, are the PBS and Smithsonian channels.
They load without any issue, you can even see the thumbnails of the different videos, but, you can only play the previews, or any short lenght video for that matter, say, videos that last less than 5/ 10 minutes...
If you try to load a full episode, you get the advertising, and then nothing, a banner saying that there was an error, and that you should try again later.
The solution to this problem is to use TV Unblock.com, it works great and it is free (so far both of these).

Thursday, January 29, 2015

New Router (Now With DHCP!)

So, last December, my WBR-2310 router died, forcing me to go back to the D-Link DIR-601, which was already, really, really beat-up and performing not so well.
A new router was in order, almost mandatory, and the chosen one was a Netgear WNR2000v5.
Configured to spec even during the holidays, withouth the actual LAN to test it, and replaced the aging D-Link DIR-601 without any issue once I got home.
The main difference with the prior setup was that I had to move my LAN setup to DHCP, in order to be able to use the Roku, but then again, using the DHCP reservations proved to work A Ok so far, so I didn't even change the fixed IP addresses of all the boxes on the LAN.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Roku: No Fixed IP For You!

First problem with the Roku in Argentina..
Well, actually, it is a problem that would eventually happen anywhere.
The Roku box doesn't support fixed IP addresses... For the love of Jeebus, they have to be fucking kidding...
Since I don't use DHCP on my LAN, therefore I'm fucked.
Tried to make a reservation, using the Roku's MAC address, but, of course, did not work.
Will have to switch to a DHCP enabled LAN for this... At least, for the few minutes it will take me to test what actually works, regarding the streaming, here in Argentina.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

The Second Roku Is The Best Roku (?)

Got a second Roku for the GF yesterday.
Again, a Roku 3, and like on the original one, mostly just for the USB port.
Nice setup, now that I have an account, even one without the hassle of the credit card, registered under the same account, and it automagically downloaded ans installed all the the same channels that I had installed on the previous one.
Nice touch, I guess.
Still have to see what can be streamed below the Tortilla Wall...

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Keep On Roku In The Free World

Got me a Roku 3 the other day, the one with a USB port.
The idea is to use it to play all my video files, specially since my TV only has one USB port, but, alas 3 HDMI ones...
So, it is kinda nice to have a device that would play all -or most of- my video files, in case the USB port goes down, which doesn't seem too far fetched.
Two things got my immediate attention with this Roku thing, for starters, you can't even use the god damn Roku device, unless you siphon a credit card... Had to call the support people in order to get an alternative URL to register the Roku without using a credit card (alll the links to do so that I found Googling are dead...).
That seemed like a really stupid idea, but who the hell cares what I think?
The other thing, I'm totally mesmerized by the "PBS channel" (in Roku parlance) and the amazing documentaries, I hope they will work, that is, I'll be able to stream those from Argentina as well, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

As American As Apple Pie

If these aren't the best apple pies in the world, then I'm not an specialist, but they certainly have to be the biggest ones I've seen.
From Costco, taken on Sunday January the 10th.
The things are amazingly heavy and delicious, just as they look.

Monday, January 12, 2015

A (New) Underwater Beauty

Last Thursday I got a new digital P&S camera to replace the trusty, ageing and totally beat up Sony DSC-W310 (which has a lethal fungus on the lens that ruins every single picture, unless taken with the maxxed zoom...).
The new one it is a Nikon Coolpix AW120, a submersible (!) camera.
Only drawback so far, haven't used it that much, is that the lens isn't covered when not in use.